


Breathe

by bellabonbon



Category: Dear Evan Hansen - Pasek & Paul/Levenson
Genre: Angst, Gen, Memories, trying and failing to cope
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-05
Updated: 2017-05-05
Packaged: 2018-10-28 07:27:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,611
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10826589
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bellabonbon/pseuds/bellabonbon
Summary: She doesn’t know how to breathe anymore.It feels wrong to her. Why should she be allowed to breathe when he isn’t? That’s not how things are supposed to happen. And she just doesn’t know how to keep living.





	Breathe

**Author's Note:**

> I do not own these characters.

She doesn’t know how to breathe anymore.

It feels wrong to her. Why should she be allowed to breathe when he isn’t? That’s not how things are supposed to happen. And she just doesn’t know how to keep living.

She forces herself to, of course. She gets up and goes through the motions, but none of it feels right. Her chest hurts all the time, and she doesn’t know how to make it stop. She’s pretty sure it will never stop. It feels like there’s a literal hole inside of her, and it _hurts._

She spends a lot of time on the Internet researching ways to cope. Post after post just says that while the pain never goes away, it does get easier. She can’t imagine it ever getting any easier, not when she has to physically force herself to even get out of bed in the morning. She reads stories of all these men and women who have lost children, and her heart aches for them. She understands their pain, and she hurts for them. She hurts for herself and for her family, and she hurts for the strangers she reads about on the Internet. She reads the stories of other families who have lost their children to suicide, and she realizes that she could never have begun to comprehend their grief before this. She never imagined a world where she would _have_ to. She reads about the self-blame and the inability to function and the daze of trying to survive in a new normal, and she feels all of it. 

But no matter how many websites she visits or how many personal stories she reads, she never feels any better. She can read a million times that she shouldn’t blame herself, but how is that possible? As a parent, her sole purpose on earth should be to keep her children safe, but when she doesn’t do that- when her children _aren’t_ safe- who else is to blame?

Larry is the opposite. She doesn’t understand him at all, and they argue constantly. He doesn’t take any of the blame. When she says that it’s their fault, that they should have done more to protect him, Larry just cuts her off. 

“Stop it. This is not our fault. It was _Connor’s_ decision. It is not our fault.”

They’ve argued about Connor his entire life. And they’re still arguing about him after his death. She has a feeling they will never stop.

They failed him. Somewhere between all of their arguing, they failed him in every possible way, and now he’s gone.

She tries to be strong for Zoe. She can’t fail another child like she failed Connor, but sometimes she wonders if she already has. She thinks of all the mistakes she’s made as a mother, how she doesn’t feel like she’s ever quite gotten the hang of it despite having eighteen years of experience. She should be perfect. She looks at other mothers who balance careers and families and sports and activities, and their children don’t kill themselves. She’s never had to balance all of those things, but she’s failed in every way possible.

Zoe seems to exist in much the same way that she did before Connor’s death. She sticks to her routine of school and band and not much else. She talks to her friends, and she practices her music. She comes to the dinner table, and she’s quiet but not _too_ quiet, still slightly sullen and a little sarcastic. She doesn’t bring attention to herself, keeps everything inside of her just like she’s always done. 

Cynthia thinks that’s probably her fault as well.

She’s starting to understand things she never noticed before. There’s been _so much_ that she never noticed, and she’s trying to pay more attention. Their world has always centered around Connor. It’s certainly not always been positive, but that’s where their attention has mostly been directed. Connor was never easy. He was always sad or mad, rarely happy. He was either throwing things and punching holes in the wall, or he was locked in his bedroom ignoring them all. Either way, that’s where the attention went. It wasn’t that Zoe was ignored, but she seemed to condition herself into believing that she couldn’t verbalize her own problems because maybe they weren’t as big as Connor’s and, therefore, weren’t as important.

As parents, Cynthia knows that they never really gave her much reason to believe otherwise.

She’s terrified now because she wants to smother Zoe and be there with her every second of every day. She wants to give her all the attention in the world to make up for all the times she didn’t in the past. It’s hard, though. Zoe’s sixteen years old, and she doesn’t _want_ to be smothered. She doesn’t _want_ to share her secrets or her thoughts or her problems. And since she doesn’t know any other way of dealing with those things, she just keeps them to herself. 

But Cynthia can see it. Zoe’s eyes are so different now. The small light that used to be there is gone, and she can see the anger and the resentment and the pain. She can see the confusion and the bitterness. She can see the sadness of a girl coping with loss and the hurt of a girl dealing with her first heartbreak. It’s all there, and she wants to make it all better and take all of those bad feelings away. But she can’t. She doesn’t know how.

She calls Dr. Bonner, the same psychiatrist Connor saw a few times before Larry deemed it a waste of money. She doesn’t bother listening to his opinion this time, and she makes an appointment for Zoe because she refuses to let another child slip through the cracks. She won’t do it.

She expects an argument, but when she brings it up, Zoe just nods and says okay and goes back to her calculus.

Cynthia picks her up from school on the day of the appointment. She signs her out, and they drive to the doctor’s office. The car ride is quiet and pretty uneventful, and Cynthia realizes how rare it is that she actually gets to _drive_ Zoe anywhere these days.

Connor had zero interest in driving, and he basically had to be forced into getting his license. He flat out told them not to get him a car and said they’d be wasting their money because he’d never use it. Zoe was the exact opposite. She wanted to drive everywhere, and the first thing she did on her sixteenth birthday was drag them to get her license. She also had no problem whatsoever with accepting a car for her birthday, and she’s been driving herself everywhere ever since. So it’s kind of nice to be able to drive her for once, even if it’s just a short ride to the doctor’s office.

They get to the office, and Cynthia parks them at a spot close to the door. Zoe goes to unbuckle her seat belt, but it feels really important to say something, so Cynthia puts a hand over hers and says, “This will be good for you.”

Zoe just kind of blinks at her and nods. “I know.”

“I just… I want you to talk to Dr. Bonner because I know you’ve got a lot on your mind. I don’t want you to think…” She trips over her words and realizes she doesn’t really know where she’s going with this. “You can talk to me. Anytime. About anything. I want you to know that.”

“I do.”

Cynthia nods and tries to force something close to a smile on her face. “And Dr. Bonner can be a big help, too. There’s nothing wrong with therapy. It’s healthy for you.”

“Does Dad think so now, too, or is this supposed to be a secret?” Zoe’s method of directness can often come off as a little harsh, but Cynthia tries not to take it personally.

“It doesn’t matter what he thinks.”

Zoe nods, and Cynthia can tell she’s basically just humoring her at this point. “Okay. Cool.”

Cynthia takes a breath. “Zoe, you have a right to whatever feelings you’re having. There’s nothing wrong with any of them. I just want you to know that.”

“I’m not going to kill myself.”

Cynthia closes her eyes for a second and tries not to react. She knows that’s not helpful, and she knows Zoe’s emotions are all over the place. As much as the words hurt her, she tries not to let it show. “I know you’re not,” she says slowly. “That’s not why I brought you here.”

“It’s fine, Mom. I’ll talk to the shrink.”

The hour that Zoe spends with the doctor goes slowly. Cynthia sits in the waiting room with a copy of Good Housekeeping open on her lap. She doesn’t actually read a single word. She can’t because she’s too busy reliving the first time she ever sat in this office. Connor was thirteen and had just been suspended for throwing a chair in the cafeteria. It wasn’t the first time he’d been in trouble at school, and the principal was very serious when she said that was the final warning and that the next step would be expulsion. 

Cynthia didn’t know what else to do. There was no getting through to him. Grounding didn’t faze him because he had no desire to go anywhere to begin with. He wasn’t addicted to his phone or the computer or any other electronics like most kids were, and punishment didn’t work anyway. She tried to ask him _why_ he did these things, but he’d just shrug and say he felt like it. Larry did nothing but yell, which always had one of two effects- it would either piss Connor off and cause a screaming match that went absolutely nowhere, or he would just sit there silently and listen and then remain silent for days, refusing to speak or acknowledge anyone’s presence. Neither was a great option. 

Cynthia finally won a long-standing argument, and they decided to try therapy. Connor didn’t go nearly as willingly as Zoe did. He tried to flat out refuse and screamed at her that he wasn’t crazy and she couldn’t _make_ him do anything. No amount of threatening or bribery was going to budge him, so she had to physically pull him out of the car and _force_ him into the office. She remembers being a nervous wreck, sitting in the waiting room just terrified of what he might be saying or how he might be behaving. He didn’t talk to her for the rest of the day after that, but she didn’t have to force him out of the car at the next appointment. 

He went consistently, every other week for a couple of months, and things actually seemed a little better. They got on a routine and tried out a couple of different medications, and there seemed to be some improvement. That summer, though, he and Zoe got into a fight while they were on vacation because that’s what they did- they fought constantly all the time. She doesn’t remember what caused this particular argument or how it escalated, but it ended with Connor’s hands wrapped around Zoe’s throat. 

Larry completely lost it after that, just exploded in a way that Cynthia had never witnessed before. The whole thing was terrible. He grabbed Connor off of Zoe and basically threw him halfway across the room. He screamed and screamed at Connor, then he screamed at _Cynthia_ for trying to diffuse the situation, then he screamed _more_ at Connor. Connor actually ended up crying, and to this day, Cynthia doesn’t know if it was because of Larry or if it was because he realized what he’d done. Zoe was a mess, already hysterical from being choked and even worse because of the aftermath. Larry ended up leaving, just grabbing the keys and going off somewhere. Cynthia didn’t know where and didn’t particularly care, but she was left alone with two crying kids- one who was sobbing on the floor with her face in her knees and the other who had barricaded himself in the bathroom because it was the only room in the beach house with a lock.

Larry didn’t come back until after midnight. Zoe was in bed, and Connor was still locked in the downstairs bathroom. Cynthia was exhausted, but that didn’t seem to matter to her husband who decided they were going to have it out right then. He said he wasn’t paying for any more “therapy bullshit” when it clearly wasn’t fixing “the problem.” He said he was sick of all of it, and he wasn’t going to put up with anything else. Connor wasn’t allowed around Zoe. Period. He had to get out. Cynthia lost it then because Connor was _thirteen._ They weren’t kicking him out or sending him to military school or any of the other insane options Larry was spitting out. They argued about it for hours.

Connor spent the rest of the summer staying with her brother in Missouri.

She doesn’t know why she didn’t fight harder. She doesn’t know why she let Larry win, why she let him end therapy, why she let him send Connor away for even a week when there was so much broken in their family that needed fixing. Maybe if she had fought harder or put her own foot down… 

Maybe nothing would be different.

She shocks herself with that thought and tries to forget it. It’s there now, though, and the words haunt her. 

_Maybe nothing would be different. I wish everything was different._

They weren’t Connor’s words. She knows that. She’s tried to forget them, but she can’t. Even though she knows about all the lies, she still feels those words in every fiber of her being and in every bone in her body. She let them act as a connection to her son after he was gone, and now that she knows they weren’t true, she still can’t fully let them go.

The hour is up, and Zoe comes back to the waiting room. Cynthia hands her the jacket and purse she’s been holding. “How was it?” She tries to sound encouraging and not like she’s just been sitting there the whole time regretting so much with Connor. 

Zoe slips her jacket on and shrugs. “It was fine. I’m supposed to come back on the 19th.”

Cynthia nods and grabs her phone to add the appointment before they forget. They leave, and it’s quiet again in the car. She wants to ask questions, but she knows she shouldn’t. If Zoe wants to talk to her, she will. 

She just has to make sure she’s available.

She spends the rest of the afternoon writing thank you notes. She knows she’s late, but she’s just now getting to it. Or maybe getting to it is the wrong phrase- she’s just starting to feel like she _can_. She’s normally obsessive about getting things like this done in a timely manner, but she assumes everyone will understand her delay. If they don’t… well, she really doesn’t care. 

Zoe’s in her room, doing homework or reading or something. Larry’s at work, of course. He’s spending more time there than ever, but she’s not surprised. He’s avoiding her. He’s avoiding the house and the family altogether, but he’s avoiding her specifically. Her grief makes him uncomfortable, and his ability to carry on makes her uncomfortable. She doesn’t care that he spends so much time at work. When he’s home, all they do is argue, and it’s exhausting.

She’s just so _tired._

All the websites tell her this is normal. The majority of couples who lose a child end up divorced. She understands this, and it’s not that she _wants_ her marriage to fail… she’s just not sure it’s worth saving. They haven’t been alright for a very long time, and this whole… it’s all just worse now. On the same hand, she knows they won’t end up divorced. If they were going to go that route, they would have done so a long time ago. They’ll just continue to exist like this, and she’s just too tired to really care.

More than tired, though, she’s just _angry._ She doesn’t understand him at all. Maybe she hasn’t in a long time, but she just doesn’t understand how he doesn’t feel the same way she does. Logically, she knows that’s crazy and not fair. She _just_ told Zoe that she was allowed to feel any way she needed to and that there was nothing wrong with. It’s different, though. Zoe is a confused teenager. Larry is a grown man who just lost his son and who carries on like nothing ever happened. She just doesn’t understand, and it just angers her so much. She wants him to feel the same things she does- she wants _him_ to understand how _she_ feels. She wants him to share in the blame and the self-loathing, and she doesn’t care if that’s selfish or unfair. She _needs_ someone with her in all of this, and he just seems so far away.

She writes a few notes, checking things off of her list as she goes. She’s always been a list-maker, always been very organized, very Type A. She doesn’t know how to be any other way, so she handles this the same way she handles everything else. It’s too emotionally taxing, though, and she sets the rest of the cards aside to deal with later. Xanax is the only thing keeping her sane, and she swallows one and pours herself a glass of wine. She knows it’s probably not the healthiest dinner, but she doesn’t care.

It’s late, and she wants to lie down. She heads upstairs to check on Zoe, though, just like she has every night since… She never misses telling her goodnight. Her bedroom door is closed, so she knocks and waits for Zoe to acknowledge her before she peeks her head in.

“I’m heading to bed, just wanted to pop in.”

Zoe’s at her desk working on her laptop. She has earbuds in one ear and pauses whatever she’s listening to on her phone. 

“What’re you working on?” Cynthia steps into the room, genuinely interested and wanting to be engaged in whatever Zoe’s doing, even if it’s just some mindless homework assignment.

“I’m trying to write about symbolism in A Separate Peace.”

“That sounds fun.”

“It’s not.” Zoe looks extremely bored. “Is Dad home yet?”

Cynthia shakes her head, trying to keep her face as neutral as possible. “No, they’ve got that big insurance case, so I think it’s taking up a ton of time.” 

It’s after ten. No case should take up _that_ much time. She doesn’t point that out. Zoe can probably guess for herself what it means that her father would rather spend 16 hours a day at the office than be at home with his family. She doesn’t need to spell it out.

Zoe just nods, though, and Cynthia can see the same concerted effort to keep her emotions blank. 

There are a few seconds of silence, and then Cynthia finally swallows her uneasiness. “Hey, I just wanted to tell you how proud I am of you.”

“For what?”

“For you know, talking to Dr. Bonner and just… just everything. You’re amazing.”

Zoe looks confused for a second, but then she says, “Mom, I was serious earlier. I’m fine. You don’t have to worry about me doing something crazy.”

The word crazy stings a little bit, but Cynthia just nods. “I know. I just… you’re just great, and I just want you to know that.”

Zoe gives her maybe the saddest smile in the world, but she nods. “Thanks.”

“I know how crappy things have been. I mean, they’re not great, Zo. I know they aren’t. But you… just with everything you’ve been through… You’re just amazing. It just blows my mind.” 

“You’re kinda scaring me, Mom…”

Cynthia smiles, but she’s sure it doesn’t reach her eyes. She shakes her head. “I just want you to know how important you are to me. And to your dad. And to this world. Zoe, I just… I just want you to know that.”

Zoe looks like she’s a little uncomfortable, which probably shouldn’t be a surprise. Most teenagers don’t like touchy-feely stuff, especially from their parents. Zoe’s not the sentimental type, so of course this is strange for her. Still, it feels really important to say these things right now, and Cynthia doesn’t regret them.

“I’m going to head to bed. Try not to stay up too late, okay?” Zoe nods, and Cynthia walks over to kiss her forehead. “Night, honey.”

Zoe smiles up at her, a little less sadly. “Love you, Mom.”

That feels really nice, and Cynthia returns the smile. “I love you, too.”

In the hallway, she stops and kisses her fingertips before pressing them against the closed door next to Zoe’s. She stays there for a minute, just like she always does, with her eyes closed as she tries to conjure a good memory. She tries to think about the time she and Connor spent hours in his room working on a diorama for _Holes_ and how interested he was and how he talked to her the whole time, telling her all about the book and the characters. And she just sat there and listened to him and took it all in because he was never that interested in anything, and he never liked to talk that much, even as a ten year old.

She tries to think about that and not about that night in early September when she stood in the same spot and knocked on this door to let Connor know that dinner was ready. She tries not to think about how annoyed she got when he didn’t answer and how he was just adding to an already bad day. She especially tries not to think about how she was already losing her temper when she decided to barge into his room and let him know exactly how she felt about being annoyed. 

And of course, she definitely tries not to think about what she found.

It doesn’t matter, though. She’ll never stop reliving it. As long as her heart insists on beating and her lungs insist on functioning… she’ll never stop seeing it. She’ll never forget the way her knees buckled underneath her and how she fell into his dresser, unable to move or even stand for the longest ten seconds of her life before her body switched to overdrive. She won’t forget how she tried and tried to do something, _anything_ , to get him down from there, but she was too short and couldn’t reach. And she still doesn’t know how she managed to find her voice and scream for Larry, but she did. And even though it’s all a blur of panicked screaming and hysteria, she’ll never forget Larry running in and nearly tripping over the desk chair that was out of place and on its side before he managed to finally just get him down. And he called 911 in a panic, while she collapsed on the ground and tried CPR because it was the only thing she could think of and she was desperate to do anything that might stop the nightmare. It was too late, and she knew it, but she screamed at him to wake up and slapped his face and beat on his chest and sobbed over him until a police officer was there and physically pulling her off and away from her baby who was lying there dead on the floor of his bedroom.

She tries not to think about any of that, but of course she fails. She always does.

She’s crying by the time she finally gets into bed. Of course she is. She’s always crying. There hasn’t been a night since it happened that she hasn’t cried herself to sleep. She doesn’t think there ever will be. There’s something worse about nighttime. The hole in her soul seems to hurt even worse than it does normally, and the ache in her chest is stronger. 

Getting to sleep is never easy. She’s exhausted, but she never falls asleep without effort. Her mind is too busy even though the rest of her feels completely empty. 

It feels like she relives eighteen years every single night.

Her mind goes all the way back to the very first time she ever heard his heartbeat. And the first time she saw him and how she held him and how she’d never even known that it was possible to love another person _so much_ right there in that very first minute. He was the perfect baby, so calm and rarely fussy. And when she found herself pregnant just a couple of months later, she thought she could handle it with no problem because he was so easy. It wasn’t easy. Having two babies was much harder than having one, but she made it work and loved them both _so much_. She would rock them both together, thinking about how close they’d be as they grew up and how Zoe would be so lucky to have a big brother who would take care of her and protect her.

None of that turned out to be true.

Maybe they were too close in age. Maybe they were just too different. Maybe… maybe she doesn’t know. They never got along like she’d imagined when they were babies. Sure, they had moments of peace. When they were little, they could play together for a little while, but it was only a matter of time before one or both of them would end up in tears and/or throwing a fit. As they got older, they fought over _everything_ \- over toys, over homework, over who used the last of the soap in their bathroom! It was never-ending. If Larry was around, it was always Connor’s fault, no matter what they were arguing over. It was Connor’s fault because he was older and shouldn’t be picking on his little sister like that. Zoe was always an angel in his eyes, and he never could seem to grasp the fact that the thirteen month age difference did not magically make Connor into a perfectly functioning, mature human being. She steered the other way almost by default. She was harder on Zoe because she was less likely to explode. In the interest of keeping the peace, she found herself snapping at Zoe to stop agitating. Cynthia knew that both she and Larry contributed to the discourse, even if it was largely unintentional.

Her mind replays everything over and over again. All of the screaming and the outbursts and the way Connor could go from completely peaceful one second to throwing anything he could get his hands on the next. She tried. She really, really tried, but nothing ever worked. She couldn’t make him happy. She wanted to. She knew he was in pain, knew he was trapped in his own head, and she wanted to take all of that way from him. But she didn’t know how. She should have fought for him, she should have tried harder. There are so many things she _should_ done to rescue him and keep him safe, but she didn’t.

She didn’t save him.

She feels herself finally drifting to sleep. She knows she’ll be plagued by the same nightmares that she always has, but she almost welcomes them. 

Her nightmares are better than her reality.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading!


End file.
